[tex-eplain] Does xeplain.tex still exist?

[Karl Berry]

    But I have a feeling that distributing just xeplain.tex will actually
    confuse people

Oleg, I believe Jim was primarily suggesting that xeplain.tex be
distributed as a plain file, apart from the .zip, rather than suggesting
that eplain.tex not be distributed.

Jim, FYI, the current setup is what I requested from Oleg, specifically
for CTAN and TL.

I am very sympathetic with making source files easier to find.
Ordinarily I would want xeplain.tex to be on its own, a plain file in
the source directory.  But in this case there's a complication because
of the other files that comprise eplain.tex: if someone is looking
around for the file, say, "ifpdf.sty", it is confusing rather than
helpful for it to show up in the eplain source directory.  They should
find it in the ifpdf directories.

The CTAN people received a number of user complaints about this before
we adopted the current scheme of zipping up the sources.  We could
leave *just* xeplain.tex outside the zip, or maybe everything except the
"shared" sources, but that seems confusing too, as Oleg said.  Hmm.
    
    If we split the sources, the users will have to locate all the
    dependencies for themselves.  Furthermore, if/when distributions
    start compiling combinations ...

Right, that's the problem with using \input.  I continue to believe it's
better to merge what we use into one eplain.tex.  This was the reason I
did it in the first place; compute power wasn't the issue even 20 years
ago :).

    In my opinion, it is far better to add a clearer note to the top of
    eplain.tex directing people to the complete sources.

Yes, that would be good.  Also in the README and the manual.

Thanks,
Karl